The reason behind Googles generosity stems from the fact that many people have photos and videos stored in their Gmail attachment, files that can add up quickly. So, Gmail is making good on its promise to increase storage capacity.

"A few of you are using Gmail so much that you're running out of space, so to make good on our promise, today we're announcing we are speeding up our counter and giving out more free storage," blogged the Google engineer Rob Siemborski.

But competition brings greater selection. Microsoft is currently offering 5GB woth of on-line storage for their Windows Live Hotmail service, while Yahoo is offering "unlimited" storage.

Hmmm, could I possible upload the entire Internet to a Yahoo account?

But it doesn't end with Gmail. Google Apps users will have their on-line storage increased to 3GB as well. Premier members of Google Apps will see a boost in their capacity; 10GB up to 25GB.

Back in the old and early x86 days, my 15MB 5 1/4" HDD made me a God. I had the world in my hands.

But wait until Internet 2 speeds hit the general population. Some big business, colloges/universities, and government use Internet 2 which is 100 to 1000 times faster than what the home user is used to.

With that type of speed, backing up your entire HDD to some off site storage facility will be common place. Not to mention that new and improved storage mediums could see peta-bytes worth of storage in less space.

Gmail's size updates over time, a few months ago it was at 2.8GB, and finally hit 3.0 - next week it'll be 3.01, then '02, etc etc. It is still possible to get spam on a gmail account, but nowhere near as troublesome as yahoo or hotmail.

To be honest, my primary email accounts really don't get much spam, be it Gmail or Yahoo. My Yahoo account seems to get more spam, but I usually use that one to sign up for websites. Now with my secondary email accounts I get plenty of spam with, both Yahoo and Gmail. Generally it's a bad idea to post your email on the internet (as I did with my FAQs).

As far as inbox size, I am nowhere near filling my Gmail inbox. Granted, it would be nice if it were unlimited (so they can match that graphic they made with ∞+1), but it isn't an issue for me.

Yes, it seems that there are some limitations on the email system that Yahoo claims has unlimited storage capacity. Below is a quotation from their website. (I had to dig deep to find this because they don't seem to be interested in letting people know what "unlimited" means to them.)

Unlimited storage gives normal email account users like yourself an opportunity to not have to worry about hitting a storage limit. Basically, the idea is that now you can save your correspondence and memories and never worry about deleting older messages to make room for more.

Now what this means is that emails of text and maybe the occasional picture can be stored indefinitely and to infinite quantities. However, if one tries to use it to store scads of emails with 20MB attachments (as that is still the limit on the attachment size), they will mark the account for abuse (which typically means that they will delete the account). Thus, the claim of infinite storage is actually nonsense. The average email user sends text measuring only 1 to 2K in size. Assuming the 2K figure, that would mean that a person with a 1GB limit could store 524,288 emails. That is more emails than a person would send in a lifetime. Even with the average random picture sent on occasion, a 2GB or 3GB limit would generally be adequate.

Thus, beware of Yahoo's policies before starting to try to use it as a storage repository as they seem to try to tout until you read the buried fine print.

On the other side of the coin is Runbox. (http://www.runbox.com) They allow users with their standard (albeit paid) accounts to store 10GB of email (with or without attachments) and 1GB of files that are directly uploaded into the user's directory structure (the user creates and manages his directory structure himself). Further, email attachment maximum size at Runbox is 100MB, 5 times that of Yahoo. The cost for their service is $49.95 per year. (Additional gigs of file storage are $29.95 per year, up to 10GB extra storage.) I have used this service for the past six years and have been very impressed with their ability to filter spam, provide support, and expand abilities. (Back when I signed up, they offered only 100MB of email storage and no separate file storage.) I recommend them to anyone who wants to have their files available anytime whether at home or away.

I have gmail, and love it. The storage ammount isnt what appeals me, its just the over all look and feel, and operations of it. I have my gmail account and college email routed through my one gmail account, so I can send/receive email form both.

Maybe they should sell storage space, but not theirs. Third party storage companies could approach Google/Gmail and pay to become auxiliary storage for them. Google/Gmail would them give them rights over the ad revenue, or could offer a portion of that revenue in exchange for their added storage.